Hi everyone,

The Holocaust was a gigantic undertaking encompassing people from various sectors, gov officials, large corporations and of course the civil service. My question concerns the extent to which knowledge of the atrocities were common in the civil service and potentially wider German society. Essentially, will government workers have been aware of this policy program and if so how many?

Did for example - the average civil servant know what was happening?

Or would someone working in a chemicals factory have any knowledge or understanding of what their products were being used for? More importantly, did the company bosses?

It may be a bit of a stretch, but it seems to me that the 'west', the Atlantic Ocean, may have been mythologised by Medieval/Roman cultures, since nobody had ever crossed it and the sun 'died' there every day.

I know about Salt: A World History and was wondering if there are other good books on the subjects of food and it's impact. I'm also interested in smaller scale like what people around the world and throughout history ate and how diets changed over time.

I know this is a bit of an open ended question, but even just recommendations for further reading would be appreciated!

I've read in some answers on here that this is incorrect and that much of the impact of disease was from changes in practices as a response to Europeans, such as indigenous populations being resettled in higher density, unsanitary centres.

But the Wikipedia article on the depopulation of the Americas says that something like 80% to upwards of 90% of the indigenous population were eliminated, quickly, and that the diseases spread ahead of the settlers.

A Harvard study looking at tree rings and using Lidar to map abandoned villages determined when these villages were abandoned, and it was roughly a century after European contact. One of the authors said his hunch was that it was the introduction of European livestock. This doesn't match with either theory, the one about rapid depopulation or the one about it being European settlers forcing indigenous peoples to change their practices, but the general idea from this study is that the depopulation was more gradual.

Plenty of folks on the internet like to downplay the scientific contributions of the Islamic Golden Age, but do they have a point? Have they made advancements in science and mathematics, that are irrefutable?

What was the significance of it? Did they celebrate their birthdays somehow? How did they do so before the Gregorian calendar became standard?

Edit: What are the theories of how Biblical ages were determined?

Any suggestions? Recently found out my name links me with Vikings and they came to my local area so thought it would be interesting to learn about

Or is proof actually in question?

Let's say it's 1770, and I am a young Bostonian freshly graduated from the local university. Am I likely to have met, or even seen, an American Indian? How far west would I have to travel to reach the closest Indian settlement? Would this be a particularly dangerous journey, or was the frontier reasonably secure after the war with France?

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So obviously Chagatai (also known as Old Uyghur, Old Uzbek, or Sart) was frequently used as a lingua franca, for literary purposes, in administration, and by some members of the upper class in Central Asia between 1400 and 1900, but was it ever spoken by a majority of the common people in any particular region?

In the Ming and Qing dynasties I know that salaries for government officials were especially low, which sometimes led to widespread corruption. Also funding for local government was also pretty bad which led some officials to pay out of their own pocket or raise extralegal taxes just to maintain the government.

Given this, why was being a mandarin official so coveted?

Second question is: Nowadays, there is a stereotype (especially among the Chinese diaspora) that parents push hard for their kids to become doctors and lawyers. How did service in government fall out of favour as a coveted job?

I promise this isn't a homework question and is merely a theoretical one for my own personal knowledge.

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Say that there are two sides in a battle, Side A and Side B. The battle goes as follows; Side A is besieging Side B in a walled city of large size and population and enters the city walls through subterfuge. Side A assassinates the leader of Side B, kills half of Side B's army and population, but their leader is heavily wounded in combat (but survives) which leads to Side B pushing Side A out of the city. Side A's army retreats, but destroys the city walls as they do.

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What would this engagement be classified as? A tactical victory for Side A? A tactical draw? A Pyrrhic victory for Side B? I tend to think it's a tactical draw since both sides achieve important goals, but I'm not 100% sure.

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Edit: Were there any particular battles that fit this description? None that I can think of off the top of my head fit the scenario exactly.

I've always enjoyed history, but most of my reading in the field has been a handful of mainstream books published by non academic presses. I started to review the recommended reading list here and have since been introduced to the plethora of great work published by academic presses, something I never had exposure to before. While the recommended lists here along with recommendations I find in books I'm reading give me plenty to look forward to, I'd also like to keep up with newer release history books by academic presses, which I find hard to do.

My current method of looking for interesting new books is to browse recent releases in the History category on Amazon/B&N.com, browse my local Barnes and Noble, and looking at new releases at in my local public library database. None of these really lead you to many books published by academic presses unless it is getting lots of media attention.

Does anybody have any suggestions on how I can keep up with new releases of history books published by university/scholarly publishers? I don't have access to a university library, nor do I work in a related field, therefore I imagine using academic journals isn't a realistic option for me. I'm not really sure how to approach this otherwise.

Thanks for any and all suggestions!

I've seen a few aircraft in documentaries as well as video games that have these lines on the cockpit glass that mark off degrees and i can't for the life of me think why they would need and or want these there.

I've posted edited lyrics below. I hope this isn't a dumb question, I've genuinely tried to google this using keywords form the song but I'm not clear on some of them, obviously some I do know, like the Jesus thing and the Kennedy's.

[Lyrics] (Edited down to only the verses that have references in them.)

Please allow me to introduce myself

I'm a man of wealth and taste

I've been around for a long, long year

Stole many a man's soul and faith

And I was 'round when Jesus Christ

Had his moment of doubt and pain

Made damn sure that Pilate

Washed his hands and sealed his fate

[Verse 2]

I stuck around St. Petersburg

When I saw it was a time for a change

Killed the Czar and his ministers

Anastasia screamed in vain

I rode a tank, held a general's rank

When the Blitzkrieg raged and the bodies stank

[Verse 3]

I watched with glee while your kings and queens

Fought for ten decades for the gods they made

I shouted out, "Who killed the Kennedys?"

When after all, it was you and me

Let me please introduce myself

I'm a man of wealth and taste

And I laid traps for troubadours

Who get killed before they reach Bombay

*I meant the Jomon culture

Some context: I listened recently to Dan Carlin's "Ghosts of the Ostfront". At one point he cites Order 270 as an example of how totalitarian regimes operate, specifically citing this passage:

That commanders and political officers who, during combat tear off their insignia and desert to the rear or surrender to the enemy, be considered malicious deserters whose families are subject to arrest as a family, for violation of an oath and betrayal of their homeland.

The tone he took was something that, you couldn't really resist in a totalitarian regime because you and your family would be shot. I wanted to test this assertion, though, because there's a trend in trying to excuse e.g. Nazi war criminals by saying "they were made to do it". Sometimes investigation suggests regimes weren't actually all that strict in getting people involved in horrible acts. So I it's worth investigating the validity of these claims about how punishing totalitarian regimes were.

So my question is: did Stalin's regime target the families of officers who deserted? Specifically, families who were targeted purely for reprisal. I can find evidence of Stalin going after families, for instance the wife of his son:

Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, wrote in her memoirs that her father believed his son had deliberately surrendered to the Germans after being encouraged to do so by his wife. Stalin, she wrote, had Yulia imprisoned and interrogated as a result.

However, we can see here that Stalin's action might have been motivated out of her encouragement, so I don't think you can ascribe this action purely to Order 270. So I'm wondering if there were any people who were basically pro-Stalinist staunch socialist who were arrested on terms of Order 270.

Also, I'm curious as well just as to how Order 270 was enforced. Do we know how many officers were punished as a result of this order specifically? Do we know how many families were affected as a result of deserting loved ones?